


Genealogy

by deavors



Category: Incredibles (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Family, Gen, and some alternate universes of various sorts, bad at tagging pls forgive me, lots and lots of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-01-11 05:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 19,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18423702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deavors/pseuds/deavors
Summary: She offers him no reassurances, but her presence is assurance enough: heavy on the bed beside him, grounding him, reminding him that despite everything he’s got a sister, and that’s one person in the world who will never hate or betray him, who will always punch the bullies for him. That is enough. Silently, he takes Evelyn’s cold hand in his own and vows to return the favor.-A series of short stories about the Deavor family.





	1. 161. "torn"

Mom.

That is his first thought, when Winston hears that his father—tall like a statue, untouchable, a titan, a giant—has been murdered. The idea, the supposed fact, that his father is dead? He can’t even think about that right now; it’s so unreal. What matters is this: his mother. What also matters is this: his sister. Funeral arrangements, accepting the stupid inconceivable truth—that can come later. If it ever comes at all.

His mother… she isn’t like his dad. Winston always lived in awe of his father, the great, titanic _Mister_ Deavor. The man everyone respected, the man whose mere entry could bring a room to silence, whose mere family name could seal deals, right wrongs. A family name that was passed down to Winston like an heirloom, a gift, a potent shield and weapon and method of transaction, but it’s nowhere near as powerful on him, because he’s just Winston, and his father is _his father_. He’s something else. He’s barely human. Winston has always loved him, but not an everyday love—more like how ancients worshipped the sun. He’s almost too bright to look at. To perfect to be real.

His mother is another matter. She is Winston’s rock, his lifeline. She’s _human_. She’s the one who bandages wounds and bakes pies and soothes aches and kisses bruises. She’s the one who’s getting older: as they both crept up in years, while Dad stayed just as youthful as always, Winston’s mom started to noticeably slow down. Get weaker. Get more tired. She’s fragile: full of love, but liable to blow over in the wind.

When Winston hears about what happened, his mind instantly goes to her first. Because, in his mind, his mother is mortal. His mother needs protection. His mother can be killed.

His father… Another matter entirely.

 

In the hospital, Winston anxiously navigates hallways, feeling like a strange observer in his own body. It can’t possibly be _his_ shoes impacting hard against the floor. Can’t possibly be _him_ asking a receptionist for directions. Can’t be _him_ narrowing his eyes against the false florescent lights that have always bothered him ever since he was a child. It’s someone else, some other man wearing his body and his life. It’s not happening.

He knows one thing: his family will count on him to brighten things up, to make it better. And he’s already scared of disappointing them.

After wandering through this dream hospital for an indeterminable amount of time, Winston finally pushes aside a set of thick blue-and-white curtains and comes face to face with the broken remains of his family. For a moment he’s choked, just staring at them. His gray-haired mother, lying on a gurney and wearing a hospital gown. There’s a smear of blood on her neck. His father’s, he notes without a single emotion attached to the thought. Evelyn sits on a chair beside the gurney, bent over, her back to him. She’s clutching their mother’s hand in both her own. Her clothes are rumpled and in disarray. There’s blood on her too. On her forearm, below her pushed-up sleeve. On the back of her hand. Dried.

Dried, because it took Winston a long time—too long—to get here. Things have already begun to fester.

He clears his throat.

His mother doesn’t look at him. Her eyes are empty. She blinks.

Evelyn doesn’t look at him either—not for a long moment. Then, finally, her back heaves, once, as though with a sob. And she turns, shifts, her eyes meeting his own.

They’re totally dry. Ringed with red, and her cheeks and nose are flushed too, but she’s done her crying already.

Winston was in a late-night, last-minute meeting with some potential investors when he finally learned the news, told by a frantic receptionist. And, apparently, he only heard about his father’s shooting an hour after it happened. A long time has passed. He imagines everything his mother and sister have gone through: police interviews, an ambulance ride, possibly even a visit to the morgue, in the time it took him to haul himself down here.

He expects Evelyn will hate him for it.

And for other reasons, too. Chief of them being: she has said, many many times, that this would happen. His sister _knew_.  “Your blind faith in superheroes? It’s gonna get you into trouble one day.” How many times has she nonchalantly said these words to their dad. And how many times did their dad laugh and shrug and say, “We’ll see, Evie.”

She was right. Goddammit, she was _right_.

“You were right,” he says hollowly. Actually, he’s not sure whether he said it or not. It doesn’t really matter: they both know it’s true anyway.

He expects her to react with, at the very least, disdain. At the worst, she’ll scream and shove him, _blame_ him, unbridle her rage on him. And he’ll let her. How Evelyn reacts in these next few minutes will certainly determine how Winston views these events for the rest of his life. If she places blame on him—for encouraging his father’s love of supers, for turning a blind ear to Evelyn’s concerns—then Winston will place blame on himself. And it will never end. Ever. He can see this future stretching ahead, miles ahead, endless.

He holds his breath. The moment’s suspended in air.

But Evelyn gets out of the chair and walks over to him and folds her little brother in her arms, burying her face in his suit-clad chest. Her close-chopped brown hair tickles his face and he hugs her back, tightly. She doesn’t say anything, and neither does Winston, not for a while. His body has room for only two emotions, now: relief that she doesn’t hate him, and a crushing guilt that relief is all he can feel.

When she retreats, her eyes are still dry.

“Is it true?” he manages to say. “What they’ve told me?”

“If they told you Dad’s dead. Yeah. That’s true.” His sister’s voice is completely flat, without a single inflection. Morose beyond words. She sounds _dead_. As though the robber’s bullet took her, too.

“Did you… did you see it happen, Evie?” He places a hesitant hand on her shoulder, lowering his voice so their mother cannot hear. His gut twists in anticipation of her answer. Evelyn still lives with their parents. There was no reason to move away. Not when they all loved each other so fiercely.

She blinks once, slowly. “No. I heard the shot, though. When I came downstairs from my room, they were gone, and it was over.”

“Did—?”

“He died in the ambulance. On the way to the hospital,” she whispers, anticipating his next question.

Winston briefly looks down at the floor, too devastated—and, on some level, ashamed—to meet his sister’s gaze any longer. He notices that some of the dried, crusted blood spotted on Evelyn’s cheek has flaked off on his right lapel. A mark he doesn’t deserve.

“I should’ve been there, Ev. I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Winston.” She speaks fiercely, firmly. “Don’t you dare beat yourself up over this. It was a stupid goddamn _crime_. That’s all it was.”

But Winston knows there’s more to it than that. He knows, better than anyone, that the gears in Evelyn’s head are already turning.

As if on cue, she leans forward and whispers, so quietly that he almost cannot hear her: “It was the safe room. Win, it was that damn _safe room_.”

“I—I don’t know—”

“If he and Mom had gone into the safe room then they—then everything would be—” She can’t finish her sentence, but her loss of words seems more from fury than grief.

And Winston knows, suddenly, that he’s lost everything today. Everything’s been torn apart. Not just his father, but his mother—dead-eyed, already gone, a half-corpse there on the bed—and, especially, his sister. Between him and her, there’s been a chasm opened that will never be closed. They won’t acknowledge it today—or tomorrow, or maybe ever—but there’s a rift. Because he knows, already, that Evelyn believes it was the supers’ fault. And Winston will never believe that. He will never place outward blame for his father’s death anywhere but on the criminal that fired the bullet.

His thoughts go elsewhere. “Is—is she?”

He doesn’t finish the question, but his sister can read his mind. “She’s not okay,” Evelyn responds, that flatness in her voice returning. “She’s never gonna be okay. She’s gone.”

“But can I talk to her?”

“You can talk _to_ her. She’s not talking.” With that, Evelyn turns and sits back down in the chair, again clutching their mother’s hand. There’s no response. Her eyes are empty. As though her soul was torn away, leaving her body remaining.

Winston goes around to the other side of the bed. ( _Click-click-click_ go his shoes: again, not real.) His mother’s other hand lies beside her, limp. Gently, he reaches down, clutches it between both of his own. You’d expect it to be cold. It’s not. It’s burning hot, like she’s got a fever.

“Mom.”

Nothing.

“Mom,” he says, quieter, and leans down to brush a kiss against her temple.

“She’s not physically hurt,” Evelyn murmurs. He meets her gaze, hears the biting bitterness in that word _physically_.

But their mom is fragile. Always has been. Not like their dad, who’s practically a god in both siblings’ eyes: unflappable, perfectly loving and kind, unkillable. Their mom is made of different stuff. She’s human. Easily torn apart.

He squeezes her hand. She doesn’t, despite his wildest hopes, squeeze back.

Minutes later, he and Evelyn are speaking in the corner, in hushed tones.

“The doctor says… well, a lot of things. Shock. PTSD. That we should refer her to a psychiatrist.”

“And you? What do you think?” He can’t believe they’re having this conversation.

“Heartbreak,” his sister says very simply. “Dad was shot right in front of her. You don’t… I mean, you don’t come back from that. Most people don’t, anyway. And I don’t think she will.”

“People come back from that all the time,” he says, though it’s without conviction.

“Yeah,” she says, without any conviction either. Like their mother: lifeless. Accompanied by a listless shrug.

“You…” Awkwardly, unsure of how to broach this, he forges on. “You should wash that blood off. Don’t they have showers here?”

Evelyn looks down at herself, blinking. She seems vaguely surprised at the sight of the red stuff spotted across her, a sign of the violence they’ve all endured tonight, directly or otherwise. “Yeah, I’m sure they do. I just… don’t wanna leave her. Not even for a second.”

Winston gets it. “I know,” he says, gently placing a hand on her arm, “but Ev. She’s not going anywhere. She’s safe.”

Evelyn only looks at him, unreadable eyes, until he realizes how hollow and stupid his words were.  


	2. 352. "after a storm"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Deavor siblings, two years after their parents died.

Winston doesn’t usually drink. Well, you know: _drink_ , not like this. A sip or two of spirits on the deck of some potential investor’s super-yacht, that’s another matter, and something the Deavor heir doesn’t think twice about. But this is something different. He’s downed half a bottle of brandy in the past half-hour, and he’s already reaching for it again; it sits on the small, square wooden table beside his comfortable chair, all too available, all too within reach.

His mind is still way, way too clear, and he winces as he holds the bottle to his mouth and feels the liquid burn its way down his already-scorched throat, hoping for an end to his clarity. He doesn’t particularly want to think anymore. Today was another level of cruddy, and he would rather just forget everything. If his body and brain will allow it.

His sister gets drunk so easily, but apparently Winston wasn’t blessed with similar genes. He’s been drinking for half an hour straight, and he doesn’t feel any different—just a little nauseated. With a groan of annoyance, he replaces the bottle on the wooden table. He can’t even _drink_ right.

He hears a noise at the door behind him. The housekeeper, no doubt, wanting to replace his towels. Right now it’s nearly midnight, but Winston isn’t surprised to hear a jiggle at the doorknob. This hotel keeps odd hours—maids come and go at the strangest times of the night.

Not turning to look at the door, he tiredly calls, “Come back in an hour, please?”

“It’s me,” comes the dry response.

Evelyn. The one person he doesn’t want to see. Winston folds his arms and, in stony silence, glares at nothing in particular.

“You still sulking?” comes his sister’s voice, slightly muffled by the door between them.

“Yes. Go away.”

“Don’t be a baby. I come bearing gifts. Red wine, nineteen thirty-five vintage. Truce?”                

He hears an offering in Evelyn’s voice, which is something of a surprise. He’d expected her to stay angry for a long time, after what happened earlier today. He’d expected the rift between them to stay open and wounded for weeks, at the least. But she seems ready to forgive and forget.

Or maybe the wine’s poisoned. Yeah, that’s the more likely option.

“No thanks. I think I’ve had enough alcohol for tonight.” His voice emerges sounding more forlorn than biting, to his own distaste.

“Yeah, right. Let me in.” A fist begins to pound dully at the door.

He leaps to his feet, (probably disproportionately) upset. “I’m serious, Evelyn, leave me alone! And stop that damn racket, I’ve got _neighbors_!”

Sing-song, she replies: “Let me in and maybe I’ll stop.” Her fist continues its insistent banging.

Winston stalks furiously toward the door, scowling as he twists the doorknob and throws it open. Evelyn saunters in, wine bottle clutched by its neck in one hand. Winston just barely stops himself from slamming the door shut behind her, instead closing it with a gentleness he doesn’t particularly feel.

His sister stops in the middle of the small hotel room, bare feet sinking into the plush cream carpet. Her eyes, roving as though she owns the place, fall onto the wooden table and the bottle of brandy. “Starting early, huh?” she remarks wryly.

“It’s midnight,” he seethes. “Where the hell are your shoes? You look a total mess.”

It’s true, she does. Her hair is in disarray (more so than usual, anyway); her button-down white shirt is rumpled, the top two buttons undone; one black pant leg is rolled up, the other down.

“I kicked them off outside,” she says nonchalantly.

“Evelyn. But what if someone steals them?”

She lifts her shoulder uncaringly. “You talk like I can’t afford another pair. Or a million more pairs.”

He just shakes his head, scowling. This is exactly the kind of mindset their mom and dad tried to burn out of their children, despite their vast Deavor riches. And—mostly—it worked. But only mostly.

Evelyn flops down in the plush living chair, throwing her legs over its arm; the wine bottle gets placed on the wooden table, where it clinks against the bottle of brandy. “Aren’t you gonna ask me where I’ve been? Who I’ve been with?”

“I expect you’ve been drinking. What else is new,” her brother says stonily.

She rolls her blue eyes—a relic from their father—toward him. “I thought we were done fighting.”

Winston opens his mouth to yell something harsh and angry, but at the last second deflates. He sighs heavily, a white flag. “Yeah, I guess we are. Or anyway, we should be. I said everything I wanted to say earlier.”

“And I heard it all. Trust me.” She beckons toward him with the crook of one hand. “C’mere.”

He does. When he’s standing beside her, looking down at his sister, she reaches out and takes his hand. Her own is quite cold, likely from wandering the streets of New York for a few hours, barhopping with strangers. New York is their mother’s birthplace, and where she met their father during their university years. It’s a special place. And, somehow, a dark one too.  

“Winston,” she says quite clearly. “It was stupid. All of it. I’m not too stubborn to admit that. And for god’s sake, I don’t want you to be driven to _drink_ about it. Can we forget?”

He lets out another dark exhale. “I meant everything I said, Evelyn. About the way you’ve been acting. It’s disrespectful.”

Her hand, which he’d half-expected to let go of his own, just clutches it tighter. “I understand why you think that. I’m also not gonna quit acting on what I believe in.”

Firmly, he removes his hand from her own and clenches it at his side. “Going to the media and giving an anti-super press conference? On the second anniversary of our parents’ deaths? On the day we’re supposed to be celebrating their lives? It’s not only disrespectful, it’s…” He struggles to find a word for it, ultimately giving up in frustration.

“Shitty,” Evelyn says.

“I wouldn’t have been that vulgar, but yeah. It _is_ shitty.”

Evelyn shifts in her seat until her feet are planted on the floor, an unusual position for his sister, who _never_ sits normally in a chair. She looks up at him, eyes suddenly darker.

“I know who murdered my parents,” she says.

Winston says nothing.

“And I’m gonna speak out against the killers. Until I’m dead. And I know it hurts you, I know you don’t agree, and I’m sorry about that. But Winston.” She looks up from below her brows, intensely, darkly. “I’ve never felt so goddamn _strongly_ about anything. Believe me.”

“I do believe you,” says her brother. It scares him how much he does.

“But I wanna keep the peace.” She reaches out, touches his arm. “And I know how much it hurts you. So no more press conferences.”

He never expected to get this kind of promise from Evelyn. He couldn’t count on both hands the number of times she’s gone to the press, speaking out about how she believes superheroes were responsible for the deaths of their parents. How many times her activism has made headlines. He thought it would never end. But with this promise, he nearly collapses in relief.

“Oh, Eve.” He reaches over and touches her hand on his arm, clutching it tight. “You can’t imagine—I mean, the stress—”

“I know. It’s been putting you through the wringer. I’ve been a shitty sister. That’s why I’m stopping. But.” She leans closer. “But.”

“But this doesn’t mean you don’t still believe what you believe,” Winston concedes. “I get it.”

“Do you?” She chuckles blackly, casting her gaze away.

He squeezes her hand, feeling a burst of compassion overwhelm everything else, all his relief and underlying hate and frustration. “Yeah. I do. More than anyone else, I think. Remember: I lost Mom and Dad too.”

“Yeah. You did.” He can’t read Evelyn’s voice. Something lurks under the surface, something inky.

With gentleness, he says: “I know you’ve been through it. That it’s been incredibly hard for you. That you’ve had it worse than me.”

“Don’t say that,” she says with surprising vehemence. “We’ve both had a pretty shitty time.”

“You _have_ had it worse, though. You took it worse. We both know it. And in light of that—”

“Don’t baby me, Winston.”

“I’m not trying to do that. Never.”

“I know,” she says. “But you do it anyway.”

She sounds quite vulnerable, suddenly, more like a child than a grown woman currently working towards her Master’s degree. She’s just young, he realizes, younger than him in some ways, and hurting badly. Winston remembers the horrible things he said to her earlier after finding out about the press conference, the nasty things, the words he called her: _selfish, cowardly_. The way he lashed out, hard, trying his best to drive her away—the only family he’s got left, the last, best thing in his life. The only other person who understands the pain of losing almost everything you love.

“I wouldn’t ask you to abandon your beliefs, Eve,” he says softly. “You’re entitled to them. Heck, who am I to say you’re not _right_? We can agree to disagree. And I’m sorry for everything I said. Believe me. Like you said: I’m ready to forget. Let’s put it all behind us, and go home.”

She rises from her chair in a smooth motion, an acceptance of his terms, and they enfold each other in a tight hug. Against his shoulder his sister says, “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

After everything that happened today—the anniversary remembrance ceremony, meeting some of his parents’ old friends and listening to their stories, the emotions the press conference dredged up—Winston feels like he’s about to cry. But then Evelyn mutters, “This city smells like ashtrays and gutter trash, anyway. And all the bars are dives.”

For some reason this makes him snort, briefly forgetting his tears. “What a glowing review.”

“I’m just being honest.”

They withdraw from each other, her hands still on his arms, both smiling slightly. Evelyn’s features look harsh in the hotel’s cruddy fluorescent lighting, but he can still see his mother in her, an intensely similar reminder, like a living mirror. He imagines she feels the same about him, reflecting their dad.

He fights back tears again; he’ll cry later, in private. “Better get your shoes from the hall. Y’know. Before somebody steals them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. 10. "fool's hope"

Winston truly thought she’d changed.

For years she’s said nothing about supers, nothing about their parents’ deaths, nothing about the boiling hatred she held in her heart. To tell the truth, Winston and Evelyn barely talk about their mom and dad at all, ever. But maybe that‘s for the best. Winston has his therapist for that, and Evelyn has... well, he’s not sure _who_ she talks to, if anyone. Maybe herself, at night. Maybe strangers in pubs. Maybe nobody. In any case she doesn’t talk to him, and, far more vitally, she doesn’t talk to the press, which is g—

No. Winston won’t think that. It’s not _good_ that his sister refuses to open up. He knows she’s still hurting. He knows Evelyn’s still going back to that night, their father’s body on the floor, their father’s blood on every surface, their mother with colorless eyes and a pinched mouth and no soul in her anymore. Winston knows because he does it, too. He’ll be in a meeting, or in his office, or on the phone with a client, and suddenly he’ll be back in that night, without warning. He’s gotten good at hiding it, at powering through with a cheerful smile that doesn’t tell the whole story. But that damn well doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

There are times Winston is grateful for respite, grateful that Evelyn no longer gives interviews where she details her hatred for superheroes and blames them for their mom and dad’s passings. And there are times where Winston wishes she’d just  _ talk _ . That their parents’ deaths didn’t feel like a gulf between them, a gulf that they refuse to acknowledge. That they could open up and cry together. Lord knows Winston wants to cry. And does, sometimes. Lord knows there’s a lot to cry about.

But with the passage of years he truly thought, or allowed himself to think, that Evelyn no longer blamed superheroes. That she’d passed the blame onto the people who it belonged with—the criminals who’d broken into the house and fired the bullet. She didn’t speak of it, and so Winston allowed himself to think the best of her. 

Then comes that day.

“...or dad could've taken mom to his safe room as soon as he knew there was trouble,” Evelyn says, all too casually, as though she’s never stopped thinking it, not after all these years. And although the supers in the room can’t hear the subtle implication there, Winston hears it loud and clear.

She can’t know how much it hurts him. For so many reasons. Knife in the gut.

“I disagree  _strongly _ ,” he bites in response,more fury and pain sneaking into the words than he’d intended. That she’d say this—in front of him—in front of three  _supers,_  no less—it’s humiliating, and it guts him because his parents are dead and he’s never getting them back no matter who’s to blame, and it guts him because his sister is  _wrong_ , and also because she has  _not_ recovered, has  _not  _changed her mind, and he was just too dumb to see it. 

Later that night, after a few glasses of wine no doubt, Evelyn slips into his office on the hundred and ninth floor of DevTech. “Burning the midnight oil?” she asks, but with an uncommon gentleness, lingering in the doorway like she’s unsure Winston will even grant her entry.

“Yeah,” he says tiredly, shuffling a few papers around idly. “Lots of paperwork to get done. Law stuff.”

“Legal can handle that, right?”

“I just wanna give everything the once-over. For posterity’s sake. What we’re doing isn’t exactly on the level.”

_Maybe there's a good reason for that_ , Evelyn doesn’t say, to his relief, although he’s sure she’s thinking it. She enters the office further, a little hesitantly. Which is not like his sister. She usually makes herself at home wherever she is, as though the world is hers. And she’s a Deavor, so it kind of is.

“Listen, Win. I—what I said earlier, I didn’t mean—I shouldn’t have—“

“Are you drunk?” he interrupts suspiciously.

She snorts. “Isn’t that sad. I can only be vulnerable with my baby brother when I’m  _drunk_.”

A brief pause, and then Evelyn amends, “But yeah. Quite. Does that mean my apology has less weight? ‘Cos I get it.”

“No,” sighs Winston; it’s not like intoxicated Evelyn is something new. “No. I’m—yeah, I accept your apology. And I’m grateful for it. Drunk or sober.”

”Happy to hear that.” A pregnant pause. The office is dim, and he can’t see her eyes; they’re hidden in shadow, two gulfs on her sallow face, a skeletal effect. Her shadow is long across the room.

“So you still blame supers for everything,” Winston says, simple statement of fact. “Even after all these years.”

“Well. Yeah.” She seems vaguely surprised that he would even ask. 

“The whole time we were planning this campaign. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You’re my brother,” Evelyn says simply. “We disagree on some things, but that fact is what’s actually worth  a damn. That you’re my brother and I’ll follow you through hell. Even if hell is, y’know, a campaign to bring supers back,” she concedes with a shrug and a humorless chuckle.

All this time she’s helped him without a single comment. She’s drafted charts, done research into superhero statistics, helped him build this entire plan from scratch, brick by brick from the ground up.  A plan to bring supers back into the light. And. She  _ hates  _ superheroes. Still she hates them, still she blames them; he knows that now. And yet she did this, for him, because she loves him. 

It should be heartwarming. Oddly, it’s not. Not even a little. 

What he thought was change? It’s just fool’s gold. And Winston can’t help but think: eventually, that false varnish is going to wear off entirely, exposing what lurks beneath.


	4. 102. “three dead hearts”

Three people die on that day.

Winston knows it, as soon as he pushes aside that curtain in the hospital and sees it: his mother with nothing in her eyes. His sister, with an inferno in hers. Their father: not there at all, leaving an empty Deavor-shaped space in the room that will never be filled, because he’s been murdered by a goon with a gun.

Dad isn’t the only one who was taken by that bullet, though. Winston knows that well. And, immediately, he becomes the bearer of all three of their burdens.

Their mother: he learns to care for a woman who has lost everything. Mrs. Deavor won’t eat, not unless food is gently coaxed down her throat; Winston, though feeling immensely guilty that he’s not man enough to do it himself, hires a maid for that. Said maid also takes care of Mom’s hygiene, and everything else that needs taking care of, because the widowed Mrs. Deavor refuses to do anything on her own. His mother is a husk of herself, and though he visits her every single day, it’s like tearing off a bandaid, every time. He hates seeing her this way; it’s ripping his heart out. PTSD, says the top-notch psychiatrist who Winston calls in to clinically diagnose his mother’s heartbreak, and Winston can’t find any reason to disagree with him. It only makes sense. Her husband died in front of her. Violently, bloodily, choking on frothy blood from a punctured lung.

Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. Winston shudders to imagine it, but he imagines it anyway, the other ways the robbers could’ve killed his dad: beating, strangling, stabbing. In that way shooting was a mercy.

Ha. A _mercy_.

He lost his father too, but that’s almost— _almost_ —less agonizing than watching his mom’s soul die by degrees. Winston doesn’t have to watch Dad die every day. He only has to visit a flat marble tombstone, small and modest, far more demure than his father deserved. If it were up to Winston, his dad would have something grand: a statue, a monument, something to mark his decades of financial and moral service to Municiberg and California and society at large. But it was stipulated in Dad’s will. Nothing fancy. So Winston visits a quiet, respectable marble tombstone every Saturday with a fresh batch of flowers, because he couldn’t forgive himself if he merely paid some grunt to deliver roses on his behalf to his own dad’s grave. Darn it, he’ll do it himself. Every time.

And so he does. For more than a decade. And he never forgets.

Some days, it’s too much: he’ll arrive, fetch the dead wilting flowers from last week, replace them with a new bouquet, and leave without another moment’s delay, because he just can’t any longer, he just can’t. And some days, he’ll linger. Sometimes for hours, sitting there on the grass until his behind gets sore, just staring at it. The gravestone: his father’s name, date of birth, and a short inscription that Winston wrote himself. He’d thought it was fitting. Evelyn had been furious. But just this once, Winston had overruled her and imposed his will.

_Father: our superhero._

It was truer than anything. Their dad had been a superhero to Winston. From the very beginning he was barely human; after all, didn’t he regularly dine with gods? In early childhood, their dad’s constant association with superheroes led Winston to imagine that Dad was secretly a super himself, and that the Deavor name was simply a disguise, a secret civilian identity masking the superhero beneath. He wondered which _super_ , and became an avid fan himself: partly because he was mirroring their dad’s obsession, partly because he was genuinely in love with superheroes, and partly because he dreamed about figuring out which hero secretly hid Dad’s face behind their colorful mask. Winston had fantasized about one day asking their dad point-blank if he was a super, but he’d never actually gotten around to doing it. The fantasy sort of slipped away, as he grew older and realized it was silly. But their dad never stopped being a super to him. Someone kind, and fatherly, a dispenser of great advice, a protector, a guider—but always lofty, always seeming to hover above it all, always larger-than-life.

Despite the fact that their dad had never even raised his voice in their presence, Winston was always a little afraid of him. A little in awe, too.

His loss was so gargantuan that at first, just after his death, Winston barely felt it. It was like stories you hear about people who receive awful wounds, but at first can’t feel the pain. Shock, maybe. But then, everything started settling in. The fact that there were some titanic shoes to fill. The fact that Winston owned the company now. _Winston_ owns _DevTech_. Years later he still hasn’t fully processed that. They’d never really talked about this, when Dad was alive: who would inherit the corporation when he was gone. Dad seemed to have so many years of life left in him, and Evelyn damn well wasn’t going to oversee the running of a Fortune 500 company—she just didn’t have the drive. As for Winston, he was always so enamored with his career at the National Supers Agency that he had little time to even _consider_ inheriting the company their dad had built from the ground up. Even when the NSA was shut down by the government and Winston was offered a high-ranking job at DevTech by his dad—into which he was just beginning to transition when their father was killed—he hadn’t even _thought_ about ever owning the corporation himself. And yet here it is, suddenly thrust upon him: a postscript in Dad’s will, a weight tied to both ankles.

He manages. Of course he does, he’s got nothing but supportive people all around him, master financiers and businessmen and board members who want nothing but to see the young Deavor heir succeed. Evelyn helps too, to his surprise: slinking in out of nowhere, taking burdens off his shoulders left and right until he’s unsure of what he ever did without her.

Evelyn. There’s another matter.

She darkened, that day. Winston did, too, but he manages to keep his pain and anger far beneath the surface, where they’ll never claw their way out, except in very private meetings with his therapist. Evelyn is different. Sometimes he sees her resentment bubble up, boiling and frothing. Sometimes he’ll turn, about to ask her a question, but stop, because she hasn’t seen him yet, hasn’t managed to turn her expression neutral yet, and he’ll see the absolute fury in her eyes, the blackness, and it’ll disappear the moment his sister realizes he is watching, but not soon enough to avoid scaring the living crap out of him. Sometimes she’ll clench her hands hard enough, out of the blue, to turn her knuckles white. Sometimes he’ll catch her crumpling paper after paper, for no reason, tight in her fists, hands covered in tiny cuts from it. Or squeezing the stem of a wineglass in her hand hard enough to crack. 

He lost her that day too. He knows it already, although he darn well hasn’t given up on her. But he can tell that a reckoning’s coming. He can tell that she’s searching for someone on whom to lay the blame. And he just hopes, hopes to god, that person isn’t him.

In the end, no. It’s not a person. And it’s worse. And he should’ve seen it coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man I'm sorry for all this angst. I want to write something lighter but that just isn't where the muse is taking me. I hope you enjoyed anyway, and thank you very much for reading.


	5. 94. "deleted texts"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh lol don't judge me too badly about this one

**1:03**  
Evelyn. Where are you. The hearing is about to begin. ansewr me  
*answer  
I know you’re leaving me on read.

 **1:06  
**Please, you can’t just run out like this – this is going to decide your future. You know that right?

 **1:08  
**Eve. Please

 **1:14  
**All right, if you won’t do it for yourself then do it for me. I want you to do this Eve. Your brother wants to see you here at the courthouse, not in some bar or wherever you are, throwing everything away that we’ve worked for. Please.

 **1:19  
**they’re talking about cancelling proceedings and rescheduling for another day. They’re talking about issuing a warrant. Your attorney says this could hurt your chances badly. Please tell me I didn’t make a hell of a mistake by paying your bail. Eve please

 **1:25  
**This is your last chance, I’m begging you

 **1:26**  
I know you’re readinf these  
*reading

 **1:31  
**I love you. No matter what you do, I love you. Please I want you to know that

 **1:46  
**Eve?

 **5:13**  
Your attorney wants me to tell you that there’s a warrant out for your arrest and that things have been severely complicated, his words. And that he’s disappointed. I am too.  
I love you though.  
When you’re ready to come home then come home. We’ll figure this out together.

                                                                                                **5:32**  
                                                                                                            winston?  
                                                                                                            i fucked up. can we talk?

 **5:32**  
I knew you were there  
Of course we can, call me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh... I just went where the prompt led me on this one. Another prompt in the bag I guess? I know this chapter's not much but I hope you kinda liked it. Thanks for reading anyway.


	6. 293. "rotten to the core"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn and Winston, sometime during the trial, but before any kind of recovery.

Evelyn is resentful.

She’s like an apple core somebody left out in the sun to bake. Infested, roiling with rottenness and diseases. Biting harshness just under the skin and ready to snap at a moment’s notice. She takes no shit from anybody, not anymore. She’s _done_.

Which is inconvenient, since this, right now, is her trial, and everything is contingent on her being _contrite_. So her lawyer tells her. So Winston, whose opinion she cares about marginally more than her lawyer’s, tells her. But Evelyn has no intention of being contrite. Ha. Contrite! Everyone in the world can suck it.

Sometimes though, she lacks this fire. Sometimes, she’s just tired. Still, though, she’s resentful. Still, though, she snaps like a coiled snake.

There are times where she feels like she’s lost everything. Her assets frozen, her parents gone, her future a distant dream. Those are the times when she shouts at Winston, or berates him, or throws a biting jab his way. Times when she insults his eternal chipperness, or his workaholic nature, or even more incredibly stupid things, like the way he pronounces _cereal_. She can’t help herself. She pushes him away. She stabs, deliberately, to see how much blood she can draw.

The answer is never too much.

He always comes back. Sometimes like a wounded dog, but always. He comes back.

And no matter how much she snapped at him, no matter how much she snipped and complained, no matter how uninviting and cold she was—Winston always gives her a goodbye hug. Always kisses her on the cheek. Always smiles when he leaves.

This is because—and he told her this twenty years ago, when they were still just kids—he doesn’t ever want to leave a family member with angry words, and have it be the last time they ever see each other. Accidents happen. Life happens. He doesn’t want regrets.

Evelyn imagines, right now, that _she_ is a pretty big regret.

She loves him. Below it all, although she’s angry and ashamed and confused, and although she snaps like a feral fox, she loves her brother ferociously, blisteringly, and she’d do anything for him, anything in the world. And she knows she did him wrong, and the fact that he loves her anyway, despite this, despite everything, is torture enough.

One day he finds her drunk, sprawled across her living room couch with a bottle of wine clutched in her left hand and a spilled glass of the stuff on the floor below her dangling right hand. Winston gently extricates the bottle, placing it on a nearby table, while Evelyn groggily blinks stars out of her eyes.

“Do you know what time it is, Eve?”

“Time for you to fuck off?” she slurs. It’s rare that Evelyn, who has a legendary ability to hold her liquor, actually gets drunk enough to slur. But this time is an exception. She drank a good eighty-five percent of the bottle. And it wasn’t a _small_ bottle.

“No,” he says patiently, leaning over her. “It’s not fuck-off o’clock. It’s three in the morning. You have to get to bed, hon. Big day tomorrow.”

Ignoring her slurred protests, he hoists her—with some effort, as she doesn’t lend a single muscle to helping him—off the couch, slinging her arm around his shoulder. She allows him, though not without resentment. Winston has never been very strong, but he’s able to carry her along with ease. She’s unsure whether this is because he’s grown stronger, or because she’s lost a ton of weight and muscle mass because she’s simply too lazy to work out or eat much anymore.

 As he carries her along down the hall toward her bedroom, she smells Winston’s cologne—light, kinda fruity—the same stuff he’s been wearing for going on fifteen years, because he’s nothing if not consistent. For some reason the scent makes Evelyn want to cry. It smells like _home_ —a home she’s long since lost, or destroyed.

But he’s still here. For whatever reason, her brother’s still here, still being gentle and still caring, even though she’s beyond rotten and beyond redeemable and she’s made every single effort to shove him away.

Jesus, she’s gonna cry. Hold it in.

Winston gets her into the bedroom and onto the bed, tucks her under the covers like a little kid, turns off the light. “Goodnight,” he calls quietly, a shadow in the doorway, voice muffled by darkness and late-night static.

 Spontaneously she calls out: “You’re the b—I don’t deserve—”

It’s a strange admixture of _You’re the best brother in the whole world_ and _I don’t deserve you_ , but it comes out all wrong, all jumbled by exhaustion and alcohol. She gives up, feeling like a complete idiot.

When her brother speaks it’s soft, tempered with a great kindness. “Yeah, I know, Eve. Love you too. By the way, I’m throwing out that wine bottle, and all the other ones I find, too. Nothing personal—just for your own good.”

As the door shuts, she shouts after him with remarkable clarity, “You better not, ’cos those are more expensive than your _life_ , you jerk!” But both of them know she doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t mean a single word.


	7. 169. "in the distance"

She thinks of some things as she falls: she thinks of her own white-hot blinding fury, first, and then she thinks of this: Winston, and this: she’ll never see him again, and this: she’ll never apologize to him, not ever, not even in the after, because he’s not gonna be there in hell, and she will. She damn well will.

But she would rather fall then be caught by Elastigirl. Scratch that, because it doesn’t matter that it’s Elastigirl. It could be anyone. She doesn’t want to be caught at all. She thinks of this: Winston’s face, when he realized she’d betrayed him. Her heart cracks in half like a rock smashed against metal when she thinks of this: Winston’s anger, his _disappointment_. She thinks, maybe, it would be better to never see him again. And she thinks this: maybe it would be better for _him_ if they never saw each other again, too. He can have quick closure if she dies, freedom from a lengthy and painful trial, a last gift from his sister—ha, _gift_.

And she sees Elastigirl closing in, a blur of red and black in the distance, all motion and arrow shape. And she doesn’t _want_ it, goddammit. She doesn’t _want_ this hero’s _hero work_ , she doesn’t want to be rescued like a damsel, to face humiliation, to face the fury of the one person who’s never given up on her.

Two, now, she guesses.

But it doesn’t even matter because Elastigirl is only rescuing her out of duty, out of twenty-plus years’ experience rescuing people who don’t deserve to be saved. Winston would do it because she’s Evelyn, because she’s his sister, because he loves her. And she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve to be rescued by anybody, and more to the point, she doesn’t _desire_ to be rescued by anybody. She wants a quick demise.

She likes the feeling of the air rushing by, tickling through her hair and cushioning against her. It means that Elastigirl won’t catch up so quickly. It means that, before the hero can do her job, maybe Evelyn will hit the water and this will all be over.

But suddenly Elastigirl is right there and Elastigirl’s limbs are closing around her and Evelyn realizes things aren’t going to be easy after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MORE ANGST I'M SORRY.


	8. 151. "breathing"

They are three and minus one; Evelyn hasn’t been born yet, and Winston is, just now, establishing his first memory of having a panic attack. He doesn’t understand it. Of course he doesn’t. He’s three. He understands nothing except _Sesame Street_ and his mom’s face and how good animal crackers taste in his mouth. But suddenly he can’t breathe and everything, for no reason, is entirely wrong. He feels like he’s in terrible danger, like the world is about to end, and he wakes up in bed screaming for his mom at four in the morning.

His mom doesn’t come, because both Mom and Dad are away on a business trip. Not that Winston understands this, not at the time. But the nanny comes running in, her footsteps tramping down the hall, her form lingering in the door, the lightswitch flicked on and bursting harsh against his unadjusted eyes. His mom would cuddle him immediately, but the nurse just stares at him for a few moments, mouth a little open and unsure of what to do, as he screams and cries. She was looking for an injury or an intruder, he’ll guess years later, but for now he’s three, and he doesn’t understand why she won’t just _hug_ him and tell him it’s okay.

After a few moments she does, sitting on the bed beside him and enfolding him in thick warm arms. “What’s wrong, muffin?” she asks; that’s her name for him.

He can’t tell her. He just shakes his head.

“Nightmare?” she asks, sympathetically. She doesn’t understand. There was no nightmare, there was jut blackness, and then this.

“Breathe,” she says. Slow circles on his back from her hand; his cheek warm against her shoulder. “Breathe.”

For the longest time, he just can’t.

Again, to reiterate: he’s three years old.

 

His sister comes along later, and one day he stares down at her, still and sleeping in her crib, bald head just starting to grow patches of dark hair. Her eyes are blue, like Winston’s. Their mom says all babies’ eyes are blue, and hers might still change to another color: brown, maybe, like their grandfather. Winston doesn’t think so, though. Winston thinks her eyes are going to stay just this way.

He stares down at her and he feels like something terrible is going to happen, maybe not today, maybe not next week, but sometime, and it’s like all the air gets crushed out of his lungs. He can’t protect his baby sister, he just _can’t_ , because he’s just little himself and he doesn’t know what to do, and something bad is going to happen, he just knows it, he just _knows_ it, and maybe she should just not have been born at all.

Winston slides down, leaning against the crib, back pressed hard against the wood, and takes half an hour to catch his breath.

 

Years later. Evelyn’s nine now, and Winston is almost thirteen, and they’re near polar-opposites. In school Winston is social and genial and everyone’s his friend; Evelyn sits with the nerdy kids, the uncool kids, and she’s very choosy about who she trusts. Winston’s always immaculately-groomed and looking good; Evelyn rarely bothers to brush her hair before leaving in the morning, only if one of their parents or their nanny makes her, and it’s always sticking up in wild uncombed tufts of brown. Winston is theoretical, he likes the social sciences and he likes _people_ ; Evelyn’s a hands-on girl, always lost in her tech classes, which are years too advanced for someone her age, but she’s progressing like a firecracker.

But still, there’s not one person Winston loves more than his sister, and there’s not one person Evelyn loves more than her brother. He knows because she told him. She knows because he told her, too.

The first time someone bullies Winston on the schoolyard—years later he can’t remember why; for wearing a suit to picture day? For having a billionaire father? For being too nice?—Evelyn sees, and she’s nine, and still she comes running, sneakers pounding across the concrete. Her fist makes a pretty sick meaty sound connecting with the bully’s face. She only throws one punch; the bully gets the message.  

His friends tell him his sister is badass. His friends tell him the bully is stupid, that nobody likes that kid anyway, that Winston is the best. But still, the incident rattles him hard. He’s having a hard time believing, today. Which is why Evelyn finds him lying on his bed later, staring at the ceiling and breathing like he just ran a marathon, thinking about all the ways and reasons the other kids could hate him.

He hears her footsteps. She doesn’t tread lightly, his sister. She clomps and shuffles and allows her feet to fall as heavily as she pleases, despite admonishment from their parents and whatever other adults happen to be around. Evelyn is Evelyn, and she won’t water herself down for anyone. He likes that about her. He likes almost everything about his sister, actually. His best friend.

He can’t stop sucking in breaths like he just surfaced from the bottom of the ocean.

“Hey.” His sister sounds gentle, but a little bitter: that’s who she is. Like coffee with not quite enough sugar. “Rough day.”

“I can’t stop thinking about—what if all the rest of them hate me too? And they’re just lying about it?” He doesn’t turn his head to look at Evelyn, just keeps counting the shadows on his ceiling. “Because if one of them hates me, that means there must be a _reason_ —”

“The reason is he’s an idiot,” she says bluntly. He feels her soft weight sinking into the mattress beside him, her hand on his own. “Don’t listen. Nobody likes him. Everyone likes you. If he bothers you again, I’ll embed my fist up his ass.”

Despite his state, Winston almost coughs laughing at this. “Don’t swear, Eve,” he says, but his heart isn’t in it.

She’s silent for a moment. Then: “You wanna know the reason why he went for you?”

Winston sits up, looks at his sister with wide eyes precisely the same color as her own; does she have the secret after all? “Yeah. Why?”

“Because you’re too nice. You let people walk all over you. You do people’s homework and you lend them way more money than you should and you never say no to anybody, and everyone knows you’re a pushover. Someone took advantage of that—not super surprising.”

His nine-year-old sister, the source of such wisdom. It stings. It’s probably true.

“Everyone knows I’m a pushover,” he repeats to himself, which translates roughly to _Everyone secretly hates me and thinks I’m an idiot_ , and suddenly he can’t breathe again.

“Win.” Evelyn’s eyebrows are arched in concern. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry—are you okay?”

“I just—I can’t—” _Breathe. Because I’m scared._

Her other hand descends onto his chest, lightly rubbing slow circles, but despite the calmness of the action he can sense, in that sibling way they have, that Evelyn is agitated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Breathe. Breathe. Okay?”

After a few moments his breathing—noticeably, not entirely—calms down, and Evelyn asks him, “What are you afraid of?”

He says nothing.

Then quietly, “People hating me. _Anyone_ hating me. I try so hard, Eve—”

“I know you do. That’s your problem.” She climbs into bed beside him, and he shuffles over to make room for her. Together they stare at the ceiling. Nothing particularly interesting up there, but still, Winston can’t tear his eyes away.

She offers him no reassurances, but her presence is assurance enough: heavy on the bed beside him, grounding him, reminding him that despite everything he’s got a sister, and that’s one person in the world who will never hate or betray him, who will always punch the bullies for him. That is enough. Silently, he takes Evelyn’s cold hand in his own and vows to return the favor.


	9. 457. “the girl with no name”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which evelyn is a dumbass thot

Aruba, first.

Funny enough, she has connections in Aruba—actually, that’s a dumb lie; her _father_ , at one time, _did_ have connections in Aruba, before he died and said connections melted away. A cousin, or a distant great-aunt perhaps, had once made a summer home down here on the sunny island. The surviving Deavors haven’t spoken to their Aruban relatives in nearing two decades. Are they even still here? No one knows.

It doesn’t matter; she doesn’t want to contact them anyway. Quite the opposite: she’s hoping to avoid them. But there’s not even a risk of being recognized, at this point. She looks so different. Hair shoulder-length and dyed blonde (a terrible color on her, but she’s hoping to tan while she’s here in the sun, which should improve matters slightly—right now she’s ashen). Brown contact lenses, disguising her Deavor-blue eyes. Wearing bright, colorful and flowy beach clothes instead of the high-fashion black and white outfits to which she’s accustomed. She’s a different woman, a character of her own invention.

Sitting at the bar that’s open to the beach, hearing screams of laughter from somebody’s kids and the gentle splashing of the waves against the shore and the general beachside din, she takes another sip of her martini. Having drained her glass, she signals with two fingers and half-lidded eyes for the bartender to make it a double.    

Steadfastly and with precision, she forces herself to stop thinking of her own name. She has to let go of Ev— _it_. She’s someone else now. Her passport calls her Angela.

 _You don’t look like an Angela_ , echoes a wry voice from her memory.

She shoves it aside, annoyed. Stupid memories. Maybe another drink will drown them away.

It doesn’t.

By the time she’s drained two more martinis, it’s sundown, the horizon streaked with pinks and yellows that smear the sea. The bar is growing too busy for her liking, swarming with locals and tourists alike. By the time her watch reads nine thirty-five, a total of four bar patrons have offered to buy her a drink. Two men, two women. Per the norm.

“No thanks,” Eve— _Angela_ replies each time with a smirk. “I can afford it.”

The fifth, however, is just too pretty to pass up.

She reminds Angela, intensely, of the woman who helped her escape California. Beautiful in the same way, willowy, with narrow shoulders, wily narrow eyes—brown, though, not green—and platinum-blonde hair that contrasts beautifully with her coffee-colored skin.

She sits down beside Ev—Angela, goddammit, Angela, Angela, Angela. The woman sits down beside Angela and swivels in her seat, running her index finger over the rim of her own martini glass. For a moment Angela starts, having seen the woman out of the corner of her eye. She legitimately thinks it’s _her_ —but it’s not, it’s somebody else. ( _You don’t look like an Angela_. Scowling, she tries to banish the echoes from her mind.) In fact, the more Angela looks at this other woman, the less she resembles Mirage: face too narrow, nose too large, mouth too small and plump and not prone enough to smirking.

Still, though: gorgeous. And _interested_.

“You don’t look like you belong here,” says the woman playfully. Her voice, even, brings back memories: husky, slightly accented. ( _You don’t look like an Angela_ , a similar voice says with a smirk in the back of her mind, yet again.)

“That’s funny. Thought I was dressing the part,” says Angela dourly, taking another sip of her third drink. She’s playing aloof. It usually works.

“Sure, you’re _dressed_ the part. Nice costume. But you don’t look like a typical tourist. Most tourists are, y’know, having a good time. Most tourists came to party. You? You look positively depressed. What gives? You running from something?” The other woman’s voice is light; her eyes, keen and sharp, don’t match her tone. She leans slightly closer, abandoning her drink on the counter. “You afraid it’s gonna catch up to you?”

Angela looks the other woman full in the eyes for the first time, blinking slowly, and changes the subject. “How do you know I _didn’t_ come to party?” she asks with a quirked lip, raising her drink to her lips again, more for show than for anything.

She doesn’t want to flirt. Every cell in her body is screaming for her to be on her guard. And yet, old habits, she can’t help herself. And goddammit: the woman is _gorgeous_.

The other woman shrugs and leans back, the intensity abruptly leaving her brown eyes. “I dunno. You just look tired. And sad.”

“There’s a lot to be tired and sad about in this world, sister.” God, what a clichéd line. Angela wishes she hadn’t said it. She sounds like the world-weary male lead in some romantic drama from the forties or something.

“Don’t I know it.” The other woman leans her elbow on the wood counter, her hand under her chin, and signals the bartender for another drink with a flick of her other hand and a stylish smile. Her eyes return to Angela once she’s got another martini in front of her. “Can I ask your name?”

_Ev—_

_It’s Evel—_

She struggles for a moment.

“Angela,” she finally says, though it comes out rushed and awkward and fake. “I’m Angela.”

The lady doesn’t seem to notice. With a warm grin, she extends her manicured hand to shake. “I’m Sharon,” she says. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

 

Which, later that night, turns out to be entirely true.

Angela lays in Sharon’s hotel room bed, silk sheets bunched around her chest, staring hood-eyed up at the ceiling. She hasn’t been able to sleep properly in months—and her sleep in the old days wasn’t anything to brag about either. The other woman is warm beside her, lying curled up with her blond hair splayed against a pillow. It was fun. Fun enough to justify risking her getaway? Well… yeah, actually. Ev—Angela smirks, pleasant memories filling her head. Yeah, damn right it was fun enough.

Sharon stirs.

Reflexively, Angela closes her eyes. She doesn’t know why she does it. When she was a little kid, she used to pretend to be asleep so the nanny, or her parents, or the boarding school prefect, wouldn’t catch her tinkering on an invention into the wee hours of the morning. Now, though, she’s got nothing to risk. Except maybe another fuck session, which at this point is something she wouldn’t mind risking at all.

Still: she closes her eyes.

She feels Sharon shifting, the blankets rustling. The unsettling of weight tells Angela that her bedmate has sat up. She considers opening her eyes and saying hi, but something, some instinct, tells her to keep ’em closed. And hey, since when does Evelyn Deavor ignore her instincts?

Another name slipup. Goddammit, stupid stupid stupid.

Silence for quite some time, so long that Angela becomes uneasy. She feels eyes on her, Sharon’s eyes boring holes into her, which under the circumstances isn’t romantic in the slightest. Angela feels herself shifting into panic mode. She keeps her own eyes closed. She breaths evenly, as though she’s asleep, even allows her mouth to fall open a little, allows herself to drool.

After who knows how long—she’s never been the best at keeping time—Sharon’s weight shifts again, and then it’s gone. Angela’s sharp ears hear light footsteps padding away. Towards the front door. Towards Angela’s purse, which is currently sitting on the floor beside the door. All the metaphorical hackles on her body rise, and still she counsels herself to wait.

If this woman thinks she can steal anything from a Deavor, she’s got another thing coming.

Angela spends a few more minutes listening to general rustling sounds, unzipping sounds: the unmistakable noises of a Gucci handbag being rummaged through. Before long she’s heard enough. She sits bolt upright, eyes snapping open, hands braced on the bed beside her.

Sharon, crouched on the ground beside the purse, jerks her head toward Angela. Her eyes practically glow in the dark.

For a moment nobody says anything. Too awkward.

Then, Angela slowly and deliberately drawls, “They say you can tell a lot about a woman from the contents of her purse, but… hey, I don’t think that’s what you had in mind.”

Sharon says nothing. She looks terrified.

Angela sharpens her tone, letting the other woman know she means business. “Let go of the bag. I’ll get out of here, and we can make believe this never happened. Deal?”

Quickly, Sharon rises to her feet, and raises her palms like in surrender. “I’m sorry, Ms. Deavor. I didn’t mean to offend. And I wasn’t going to steal anything.”

 _Ms. Deavor_. So the cat’s out of the bag.

With a long sigh, Angela stretches, arches her back, scratches the back of her neck: all calculated to make her look casual, when in reality she’s extremely on-edge. “Huh. So. How long did you know?”

“Since I first saw you in the bar. I recognized you from the news. Your mug shot.”

So: Angela wasn’t disguised nearly as cleverly as she thought. “This is… kind of embarrassing,” she mutters. “Not going to lie.”

“Like I said, I didn’t want to steal anything from your purse. I just wanted to know it was you. Really you.”

“Well, honey, you wouldn’t have found any confirmation in there. You think I’m traveling under my real name?” Angela laughs, with no humor whatsoever. “Get a clue.”

It’s hard to tell in the low light, but Sharon might have blushed. “Yeah, you’re right. That was dumb on my part.”

Time to get this over with, to escape. “Okay. Clearly you want something from me. What is it?”

Sharon hesitates. Then: “Money.”

“Color me _shocked_.” Angela’s glad she doesn’t know this woman well enough to be disappointed by her.

“Just a small ransom. A trifle, really. Maybe a hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? That’s a fraction of your net worth. And in return I won’t call the cops, won’t say anything. Is that a deal?”

If it was earlier in the day, and she was less hungover, Angela might make the effort to act menacing; as it is, she’s just tired. “Sharon,” Angela sighs. “Sweetheart. I _broke out of jail._ I’m a _fugitive_. My assets are frozen like the Antarctic right now. How much money do you think I’m lugging around?”

Sharon blinks, owl-eyed. She doesn’t have a response.

“Dumber than I thought,” Angela mutters, and throws the covers off herself, getting out of bed. “Look. Let me have the purse back, and leave peacefully, and we’ll forget everything. You can tell all your drinking buddies you slept with Evelyn Deavor one time, and maybe they’ll believe you, and maybe they won’t. Either way, that’s all the compensation you’re getting out of this little _tête-à-tête_. You understand me?”

(Her birth name sounds foreign in her mouth. Like holding a bitter candy between her teeth.)

Sharon doesn’t seem to get the picture. She leans down, grabs one strap of the purse.

“No, I think I’m taking this with me. I think I’m taking this to the cops. The reward money’ll be enough compensation for tonight’s work.”

Reward money? For a second Angela almost feels sorry for her. “Oh, hon. Things are a lot more complicated than you think.”

Sharon pauses. It almost feels like a standoff; where are their guns? (Angela’s is in her purse. Unfortunately.) “Just tell me one thing,” she says, with the sudden innocent curiosity of a kid. “You’re the most famous fugitive in the world. Where are you gonna go? What are you gonna do? What are your plans?”

Angela hesitates. Shrugs, smirks bitterly. “Get drunk in a lot of different places. All warm and beachy, if I can help it.”

It’s true, for the most part. She doesn’t really have plans beyond this. And she doesn’t have plans to _make_ plans, either. For now, she only wants to forget. As best she can.

She isn’t used to this fugitive situation: the very act of being herself a crime, trying to conceal everything at once. She was sloppy, she made a mistake. That’s fine. She won’t again. She’s learned. And, thank god, this mistake can be rectified. She just has to get ahold of that goddamn handbag.

“Just give me the purse back,” she says, voice soothing, eyes as kind as she can make them. “Then you can go to the cops and tell ’em you met Evelyn Deavor in the flesh.” (There’s that bitter-candy feel again, making her mouth all strange.) “The purse has all fake documents in it. And a beer bottle. And maybe some mints. Nothing in there’s gonna help you, sweetheart. Please. Give it back.”

Sharon is like a cornered feline—everything about her, from her stillness to her posture to the way her eyes seem to glow in the dark—and Angela can only think, numbly: this is what Mirage was like. She was like a cat too.

A much _smarter_ cat, though.

Then she says—and Angela instantly knows why, hearing the disappointment in the other woman’s voice, knowing she’s seen the truth in Angela’s words for herself—“Okay. C’mere and get it.”

So Angela does.

The instant she’s got the purse in her hands, she plunges her hand inside, deftly unzipping a secret pocket that Sharon wasn’t quite sharp enough to find. Inside: four darts. She’s very careful not to let her fingers prick the pointy ends, but still, she’s very quick at grabbing one and jabbing it into Sharon’s neck.

She goes down dishearteningly quickly, with barely a squeak, and doesn’t struggle. Crumpled to the floor, she lies awkwardly, both eyes shut. She reminds Angela nothing of Mirage, now. Mirage would’ve grabbed her wrist and snapped it before the dart could break skin, probably. That was the woman Angela knew in prison: she looked delicate, but she didn’t take anybody’s shit. Sharon has quite a lot of life to live before she reaches Mirage’s level.

Without Mirage’s help, Angela wouldn’t have escaped prison, and even if she had, she damn well wouldn’t have made it this far. The dart is an amnesiac: Mirage had known Angela might need such things, and she had her ways of obtaining them. The passports, too, and the small—compared to the Deavor fortune, anyway—funds that Mirage was able to secure. All obtained through her underworld contacts after their daring prison break. Angela—sometimes, fiercely—wishes that Mirage had come with her, that they’d gone on the run together, but the other woman had her own shit to deal with. They’ll probably never see each other again. And that would be fine, if only Angela didn’t keep seeing so many goddamn _reminders_.

Ev— _Angela_ steps over Sharon’s body to the door, purse slung over her arm. She’s wearing the other woman’s oversize silk pyjamas. She doesn’t particularly care about this fact. A plane ticket is all she needs: a ride out of this mistake of an island.

 

Cuba, second. A week later.

Sadly, pretty much the exact same situation.

Her head’s shaved, now. She made the daring choice while drunk—because really, when isn’t she drunk?—and she thinks, at the very least, it’ll get the celebrity chasers off her tail. She’s still wearing brown contacts, and she’s still sitting at the counter at a bar, although this one’s indoors and decidedly smells worse: like body odor and beer and cigarette smoke. (A fair amount of the latter, admittedly, is her own.) She wears a sweatshirt and jeans and sneakers. Casual, a modern woman’s look; nothing Evelyn Deavor would be caught dead in.

Her name isn’t Evelyn Deavor, of course: this time it’s Julia, and she keeps reminding herself of that fact every five minutes, turning it around in her brain like a mint in your mouth. Trying to convince herself. Trying to believe that she’ll be Julia forever, that she won’t be changing this name in a month, that she can actually settle into a life again.

Ha! As if.

She downs another glass of whatever-it-is that the bartender keeps putting in front of her; doesn’t really matter at this point. Then: oh, shit.

She swore she wouldn’t make this mistake again. But across the bar from her, past the bartender’s disinterested form polishing glasses, past everything, is a redheaded beauty. Who looks just like someone she used to know. Who is dredging up memories like nobody’s goddamn business. Who is, maybe, smiling at her. Who will, maybe, in a few minutes, beckon her over for a glass of wine.

Well, shit. Fool me once. She wishes her brother was here, to frown at her and call her an idiot. But he’s not, so nobody frowns at her and calls her an idiot, so she gives in.

Before heading over, she reminds herself, with harsh venom, that her name is _Julia_. But it doesn’t really matter, because as long as she keeps making these mistakes, she’ll have another one in a week, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	10. 100. "broken wings"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry about all the angst

Evelyn, immediately after her father is shot: feels nothing.

Evelyn, in the hospital with her mother and brother and blood all over her, and feeling an ice-cold hole beside her where her father should be, but isn’t: feels nothing.

Evelyn, lying in bed months later with some woman she doesn’t know, her room a mess of clothes and weeks-old takeout boxes growing mold and pictures of her parents turned facedown on the bedside bureau: feels nothing.

Evelyn, years later, standing in front of an icy room with her dead mother’s face reflected back at her in the glass, a costumed superhero—a _mockery_ —glaring at her in the room beyond, as though _she’s_ the one who did something wrong: suddenly feels something. She feels fury. She growls. She yells. She gnashes her teeth, biblically. She wants to scream, and barely restrains herself, holding the sound in like a beast about to break its leash.

Evelyn, hours later, in the plane, acting the role of the villain: once again, feels nothing. It’s strangely delicious.

And (once she realizes that contrary to her intentions she’s gonna live through this), she vows that it’ll stay that way.


	11. 283. “thanatos’ butterfly”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is an AU where Winston finds out Evelyn is the Screenslaver before anyone else does. Hope you enjoy.

Who knew a phone call could be such a viscerally terrifying thing?

Winston’s hand hovers over the receiver. He winces, cringes, looks away. He doesn’t allow himself to touch it; even the barest hint of skin-to-plastic contact would mean the worst betrayal.

Or maybe, just maybe, the worst betrayal has already been committed.

He didn’t believe it, at first, when he found the evidence. It was right there in front of his eyes and yet, for a time, he refused to understand. His sister. His own sister, his blood, his best friend, the only thing he’s got left in the world… betraying him to this ludicrous extent. She’d never. It’s not even a question. There must be some mistake. He couldn’t possibly be standing in a dim, dingy apartment in the slums of New Urbem, staring at diagrams of eyes, and damning newspaper clippings pasted to the wall, and a pair of menacing goggles— _Screenslaver’s_ goggles—lying on a desk brazenly, like an insult.

And this apartment, this lair, couldn’t possibly be his sister’s. Winston certainly didn’t accidentally see a financial statement sitting on Evelyn’s office desk in her workroom; he certainly didn’t let his curiosity get the better of him and visit the secret second home for which she was paying rent. He certainly didn’t open the door when he found it unlocked—carelessly, as though whoever lived there _wanted_ to be discovered. He certainly didn’t continue further and further into the apartment, drawn as though by some invisible rope. He didn’t do any of these things, because that would make him a terrible brother. A brother who doesn’t respect privacy, who pries into business that isn’t his own.

Also: he is horrified. Also: he’s spent the past three hours with his major organs in his throat, feeling like he’s about to faint at any given moment. After he returned to DevTech, ten separate people asked him if he was okay. He only nodded each time, giving a grin that was more like a grimace, sheet-white like a vampire too. He was not okay.

Now his hand hovers over the phone in his office. He can’t possibly be here, in this moment. This can’t be real.

Except it _is_ real. He scowls briefly, cursing himself for being a coward. This is real, and he’s gotta deal with it, _now_.

Evelyn: he doesn’t know where she is, at the moment. Possibly at home. Possibly at some DevTech function or other. Possibly back at her secret apartment, wondering why the door was left wide open and her papers have been shuffled through. The thought makes him even more queasy. Evelyn’s secret life. She’s been hiding this monumental thing from him. Because she doesn’t trust him. Because if she told him about this, a rift would be opened between the siblings that might never be closed. And also because Winston would probably call the cops.

Probably.

Winston has never hidden anything from his sister. She’s always been the one he trusted above everyone else. She’s been his rock, his best friend. He’s relied on her witty advice, her comforting hand on his shoulder, her hugs, to get him through some very terrible times. And he thought—he _thought_ —she felt the same about him. But this…

She’s Screenslaver.

He repeats these words, these two damning words, again and again in his head until they’ve lost all meaning. Evelyn is the Screenslaver. The one who’s been tormenting them. The one who’s been making grandiose speeches, railing about how the public has become weak and complacent with superheroes around to do everything for them. That, Winston has to admit, is in-character for Evelyn. He thought—hoped—she’d left those beliefs behind, but evidently she hasn’t healed.

Maybe Winston should’ve seen this from the beginning. Maybe he should’ve heard Screenslaver’s words— _You want superheroes to protect you, and make yourselves ever more powerless in the process_ —and known immediately who’d written them. Hadn’t she voiced similar sentiments to him, a million times, in the past when they were just kids still nursing an open wound? Hadn’t he wondered, more than a decade ago, whether Evelyn would do something similar to this, only to brush his own suspicions off as overblown? Hadn’t he looked at his hurting sister, the grief ringing her eyes in dark blue circles, the molten fury she was carrying like a bezoar in her stomach, and wondered: is this an origin story?

Is Evelyn’s soul gone?

No. He clenches his hand—the one that isn’t balanced over the phone—into a fist. He’s struggling with this, he’s devastated, he’s confused, but above all he’s got hope, and above all he loves his sister, and no matter what this comes down to, he’s never giving up on her. Her soul is not gone. She’s not beyond redemption. Hell, nobody is.

But.

Isn’t making this phone call… giving up on Evelyn, in a way? Shouldn’t he speak with her first? Clear the air? Maybe the apartment isn’t what he thought it was. Maybe there’s some benevolent explanation. Maybe, when Winston gingerly brings up the matter, Evelyn will laugh loudly and wipe a humorous tear from her eye before telling him the truth—the _innocent_ truth, that she’s not Screenslaver, that there’s another perfectly logical reason for all this—and both of them will chuckle together, Evelyn in amusement and Winston in utter relief, and in a few decades they’ll tell this story to their grandkids.

Or maybe. Maybe Evelyn will hate him. She’ll stare at him with steel in her blue eyes, the reflection of their mother, only their mother never looked quite this angry, and she’ll ask, _What were you doing snooping around like that?_ And Winston will give a stuttering explanation, reduced to embarrassed flushing and unable to look her in the eye, while she continues to stare at him, flinty, unapologetic, betrayed. And _then_ she’ll give him the innocent explanation, but only after telling him she’s very disappointed in his lack of trust, or maybe even that she never wants to see him again.

He doesn’t know what will happen. He knows Evelyn better than anyone else, but this is uncharted territory, even for them, and he’s afraid. He’s both afraid of his sister, and afraid of what might happen to her if he’s right.

Still his hand hovers over the phone.

Maybe it would be for Evelyn’s own good if he called the police. Maybe stopping her now would save a lifetime of hurt—or even save her life.

But either way. He’s probably going to lose her forever.

He lowers his hand. It just barely brushes the phone, and his fingers close around the receiver, cold under his touch, and—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	12. 22. "reality bites"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is an AU where Winston was the Screenslaver. Also, Nelson is there.

So, this is not how Evelyn Deavor expected to spend her Sunday.

She’s sitting in a wooden chair, not of her own choice. Her arms are bound tightly behind the chair’s back, cords cutting sharp into her wrists; she can imagine how they’ll look when she’s untied, ringed with raw red flesh. If she ever gets untied. Which she’s starting to doubt. Her legs, too, are tied to each leg of the chair. She can’t move, and she’s starting to feel very claustrophobic. That’s the absolute least of her worries, though. So far down on her list of concerns that it might as well not be an issue at all.

She’s in a small room on one of the top floors of DevTech, near-empty and spartan; the carpet’s blue, the walls are cream, there are no windows. Standing opposite her, near the only door, the only escape: her brothers. Nelson is leaning against the wall, arms crossed, one leg crossed over the other, a supremely casual position. Wearing jeans and sneakers and a button-down shirt, her twin brother looks entirely relaxed, except for the slight frown causing a dent between his eyebrows. Winston is another matter. Wearing an immaculate suit (as usual), he’s pacing back and forth, arms behind his back, unable to look either sibling in the eye.

He feels guilty? Good. She hopes so.

“Look,” she says, drawling, trying to sound as casual as Nelson looks, even though her wrists are absolutely goddamn killing her. “We all know how this is gonna end, right? You’re going to have to let me go at some point.”

“Nope, I don’t think so,” says Nelson, at the same exact moment as Winston mutters, “We should’ve gagged her.”

“Oh, what, Win?” She focuses on her older brother; he’s showing chinks in his armor. Nelson isn’t. “You don’t want to hear the truth? Can’t handle it? Well, let’s hit you with some more truth. You’re either going to let me go or you’re going to kill me. And I don’t think either one of you has the guts to kill your sister. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong.”

She’s projecting bravado. She doesn’t feel bravado. She feels bewildered, she feels betrayed. She feels like everything just got yanked out from underneath her.

Winston doesn’t say anything. He just keeps pacing, slowly, and scowling too.

Nelson reaches into his shirt’s breast pocket. He removes something, a small object that’s been making a dent in the fabric for the last half-hour, something Evelyn’s been wondering about.

It’s a pocketknife.

He flicks it open.

Suddenly she’s wondering if, in another half-hour, she’ll still be here.

“Nelson—” She stops talking, stupidly, because she’s not sure what to say. Shuts her mouth, tight-lipped, and just looks at her twin brother, hoping to convey the exact amount of her fear and annoyance and disappointment.

“If you had just stayed in your own lane,” Winston says abruptly, fiercely. “If you had just minded your own goddamn business, Evelyn, _none_ of this would’ve had to happen.” Through his seeming irritation, Evelyn can tell: her brother is afraid for her. Desperately afraid.

 “It’s true,” Nelson says monotonously, idly lifting his arm and wiping the knife’s blade slowly against the sleeve of his shirt. “Sorry, Eve, but when you mess around in other people’s affairs, sometimes it comes back to bite you. That’s just life.”

 _Other people’s affairs_. Evelyn, at six o’clock on a Sunday, entering Nelson’s office on the lowest floor of DevTech: officially because she needed a spare stapler, unofficially because she’s become suspicious of the way her brothers have been acting these past few weeks. Evelyn, surprised at Nelson’s door being locked; Evelyn, jimmying it open. Evelyn, flicking on the light and staring at what’s brazenly sitting on her brother’s desk, unable to come to terms with it. That mask. Those goggles. Reflecting the light.

Evelyn, hearing a noise behind her, realizing that Nelson knows she knows everything now. Evelyn, being grabbed and manhandled by her own brothers, tied up, locked away. Evelyn, afraid for her own life, because she just doesn’t know when to quit.  

She decides to stall.

“So tell me. Which one of you has been prancing around wearing that dumbass mask?”

Nelson chuckles, darkly. Winston doesn’t say anything, or look at her.

She addresses Winston. “It’s you, isn’t it. Nelson would never bother getting off his ass when you’re around to do his dirty work.”

From the way Winston’s eyes flick toward Nelson, from the way Nelson doesn’t react at all, she can tell she’s right. In the dim fluorescent light, both her brothers look gaunt, but Nelson is especially skeletal. His dark hair is hanging over his face on the left side. He’s a villain, huh? He sure looks the part.

She imagines Winston as Screenslaver. Wearing that outfit, those dark clothes and that frightening mask, eyes closed off to the world, voice distorted into a cruel computerized mockery. Her sweet, lovable brother.

“You did this.” For the first time, the scope of her anger bleeds into her voice as her eyes pierce Nelson’s own.

Nelson doesn’t look away. His eyes meet hers, his expression unchanging. “Yeah,” he shrugs. “I did this. I thought we’d established that.”

“No, you know what I mean. You _corrupted_ him.”

“I corrupted myself,” Winston snaps like a wounded animal. “I’m not a child, Evelyn. I can make my own decisions.”

She disagrees that he’s not a child. She always has.

“Winston,” she pleads. “Come _on_. You and I, and him, we all know this isn’t you. You don’t hate superheroes. You’d never work against them. Those are _his_ words you’re parroting, not your own. You’ve been eating up his stupid lies. Win.  You’re better than this.”

Still Nelson stands against the wall, not moving, saying nothing.

She’s not totally surprised about Nelson. Actually, if she’s gonna be honest, not surprised at all. Out of the three of them, after their parents died, Winston was the only one who didn’t hold a grudge against superheroes. Nelson and Evelyn: they bonded over it. They nursed their wounds, allowing them to infect. They grew closer together and shut out the world, and their hatred for supers grew and grew, until not even Evelyn could deny it was unhealthy. That it was taking over her mind and body like a virus, poisoning everything.   

So she stopped. She stopped meeting up with Nelson to rant about the latest superhero news, she stopped spinning elaborate revenge fantasies in her head. She went to a therapist, she got over her issues as best she could, she locked away her memories and cut off her burning hatred cold turkey. She encouraged Nelson to do the same, and he only stared at her, blinking with those hooded blue eyes so like her own. And she gave up trying to tell him what to do. Not her problem.

But apparently, based on what’s happened today: it _is_ , very very much so, her problem.

Winston, she’s surprised about. Surprised, and sick. She can’t believe it. She can’t believe he’s standing in front of her, seeing her tied up, doing nothing to help—that he’s _Screenslaver_ , for god’s sake. Especially since _he_ was the one who’d suggested the plan to bring supers back into the spotlight. He was so enthusiastic about it, always; he was so full of life and cheer. He was the same old Winston, and there’d been no signs pointing toward this.

Except the fact that Winston and Nelson have been keeping to themselves lately, locked away in dark rooms, escaping for lunch together, excluding Evelyn from almost everything. This wasn’t the norm. Evelyn and Nelson have always been closer than Winston and Nelson ever were. They love each other, but they don’t like each other: Nelson’s annoyed by Winston’s chipper attitude; Winston can’t stand Nelson’s pessimism. That’s just always been the way it is. And yet suddenly, they were best friends? It didn’t seem right.

And Evelyn can’t deny: yeah, there was an element of jealousy to her suspicion. Yeah, she was jealous that her brothers were suddenly closer to each other than to her. She couldn’t help it. She pretends not to care, about so many things, about everything. But she cares, fiercely. And her brothers and DevTech are all she has left.

Now, it seems like she might lose it all. She’ll be grateful to escape this night with her life intact.

Without warning, Nelson speaks.

“I don’t wanna kill you, Eve. I really don’t,” he drones emotionlessly. He’s cleaning his fingernails with the blade, now. “I’d like to believe that, if we let you go right now, you’d keep our secret. But, sadly…” He sighs, an exaggerated sound. “I _can’t_ believe that. It just doesn’t seem realistic.”

“So what would you like me to do?” she scoffs. “Plead for my life? Tell you I’ll take it to my grave?”

“Actually…” He flicks the knife closed, a sharp and sudden movement. “Yeah. I’d like that a lot.”

“Don’t threaten her, Nelson.” Winston’s voice is tight, his eyebrows meeting in the middle, his lips pursed. He’s having doubts. He’s having second thoughts. At least, she hopes to hell and back that he is.

“I wasn’t threatening anybody. But I’m surprised you protest so mightily. Don’t forget, Winston—” Nelson’s eyes take on a dangerous glint. “You’re as invested in this as I am.”

“I know that. But.” Winston throws a hand toward her, but doesn’t look at her. “That’s _Evelyn_. That’s not just anybody. That’s our sister. For god’s sake, we’re not going to threaten her, and we’re darn well not going to _kill_ her. I think you’re taking this too far.”

So: he’s still on her side. Isn’t as comforting as it should be.

“Listen to him, Nelson,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Nelson’s eyes meet her own. Evelyn doesn’t look away; she feels transfixed, paralyzed. He seems to be considering. She can see the cogs in her brother’s head turning, and for a moment she’s haunted by how much his eyes look like her own, by the memory that they shared a womb for nine months, by the knowledge that his blood is her blood.

She hopes he’s haunted by all this too.

(She really, really wants a drink.)

Finally he says: “Okay, so here’s how this is gonna go.”

(She wonders: if Nelson came at her with that knife, right now, while she’s tied up and helpless, how would she defend herself? Headbutt him? Try to get up and run away with the chair strapped to her back?)

“You know things. That’s irrevocable,” says her twin brother. “And I have no guarantee that if we let you go, you’re not going to run straight to Elastigirl and spill your guts. And if you did that, Winston and I both would be ruined. Can we all agree on these facts?”

Actually, all of Evelyn’s focus is on preserving her life right now. If her brothers let her go free, she has no idea in hell whether she’d tell Elastigirl or the police or anybody. She’s still working that out.

“Yeah,” she mutters anyway. Winston nods, shortly, curtly. She can’t stop picturing him with that mask on his face.

“All right. So, with those facts agreed upon: here are the choices. One, I kill you.”

She forces herself to breathe evenly. She knows he means it.

Nelson doesn’t look at their brother when he says these next words; he keeps his calm gaze on Evelyn. “And Winston: if that’s what I decide, you are not going to get in my way.”

Winston says nothing. He looks more conflicted than Evelyn’s ever seen him, which is probably a good sign; still, he says nothing, which is probably a bad one.

“Two,” says Nelson. “You join us. Help out a little. Do some designing, some plotting. Assist us in executing our master plan on the _Everjust_. Get as invested in this as we are. And you get to stay alive. As long as you’re useful and _silent_ , anyway.”

His eyes are a darker blue than her own, unfathomable. “Sound good to you?”

She never thought it’d come to this. She can’t believe her brother is standing in front of her coldly threatening to end her life, and her other brother is standing by and saying nothing about it. Her veins are like ice water. Still: her first instinct is to keep herself alive.

Evelyn’s eyes flash to Winston, briefly. He doesn’t look like he’s about to offer any comment. He’s not gonna speak up. He’s not gonna save her.

She’s got to save herself.

Evelyn imagines herself as a criminal. A decade ago, it wouldn’t be such a hard thing to picture. She was close to committing crimes, then. She was close to falling apart. But that time’s passed; she’s healed, she’s grown, she’s mostly shut away her demons. To throw away all those years of improvement, to immerse herself in hatred again, to become a villain: after the progress she has made, the thought seems like a pretty cruel joke of fate.

But Nelson is staring at her and she knows he will kill her if she disagrees, and Winston is staring at her and she knows he’ll do nothing about it even if he disapproves. No, she never thought it'd come to this, but this is happening, and she's got to deal with it. It’s life or death, and she thinks, for a while longer at least, she wants to live.

She opens her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	13. 286. “lying through your teeth”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winsterbeam! (Implied. And sad.)

“Yeah, sure. I  _love_  your boyfriend. Why wouldn’t I?”

Actually: she hates him. She’s not sure she could hate the guy any more.

They’re standing on the open balcony at Une Bouchée de Pain, a very elegant and classic two-floor restaurant in the entertainment district of New Urbem, leaning against the railing and watching the evening traffic flow by on the street beneath. The night air is cool against their faces; behind them, the quiet din of the restaurant. They’ve just eaten. Soon they’ll pay the bill.

Her brother shakes his head. Winston knows the truth. He knows  _her_. And to tell the truth, Evelyn probably didn’t try her hardest to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Just tell me why, Eve. Maybe we can fix whatever it is. I want you and Simon to, y’know, get along! Because if we get married one day, you’ll be like his sister.”

“Jesus, I hope not.”

“ _Evelyn_.”

Winston sounds wounded. She doesn’t blame him. Feeling a pang of guilt, she exhales.

“It’s not…” She waves her hands around. “Y’know, the guy himself.”

“Liar,” Winston says with a chuckle.

 “Okay. Maybe it is the guy. I can’t stand him, Win,” she admits flatly. “He’s got zero emotional intelligence, no sense of humor, he’s just a brick. A _brick_.”

“Yeah,” Winston replies easily. “You’re right.”

“I. What?” She wasn’t expecting this, but she adapts quickly. “Yeah, as usual, huh?”

“As usual.” Her brother laughs, tilts his head toward the stars—or, at least, where the stars would be, if the sky wasn’t blocked by light pollution. “You’re right. You and Simon, you’re just not suited to each other. You like intuitive people. He’s _not_ intuitive. That just isn’t him. Never has been, never will be.”

“So you see my problem.” She lets a breath escape, decides to be vulnerable. “Look, Win. I don’t wanna be an asshole. I really don’t. Heh. I know that’s hard to believe. But I want you to be happy. I want you _and Simon_ to be happy _together_. I just…”

“Can’t stand him,” Winston completes her sentence with a slight smile on his face. He’s taking this better than she anticipated. Better than she deserves.

The wind ruffles her hair. Feels like her father’s hand on her head. Winston looks a lot like their dad, now—he’s starting to grow into his features, starting to reflect the senior Deavor even more, in the lines of his face and the angles of his cheekbones and the premature grey streaking his temples. When Winston and Dad stand side by side, it’s truly like twins. Separated by a few decades, but no less identical.

“I tried,” Evelyn says quietly. “For real, Win, I did try.”

“But what happened?” he prods gently.

 _But he’s a super_ , she can’t say. _He’s a superhero and I just can’t live with that, I just can’t look him in the eye, I disagree with everything he stands for._

She can’t admit the level of dislike and distrust she has for the institution of supers. It puts her at odds with everyone in her family—and now, she supposes, her extended family too, seeing as Winston and Simon are pretty damn serious.

She also can’t admit that—

Well. Maybe she can. Maybe she will. She owes Winston the truth. And it’s not like he can’t handle it, she thinks with an internal shrug. He’s a strong guy. He’ll listen. And he’s taken everything well, so far.

“So,” she says.

Winston hears significance, hesitation and awkwardness, in her voice. “So what? What is it?”

“When we were at Club Asteroid the other night. In the back lounge. You stepped out of the room to get a drink, ran into some friends, you were gone for half an hour, Simon and I were all alone. Remember?”

Winston’s brow instantly furrows with suspicion. She can see his fingers tighten on the railing in front of him. Maybe it was a mistake to bring this up. “Yeah, I remember.” His voice is laced through with suspicion. “When I came back, you were all… weird. Not looking at each other.”

“Tch. As if we weren’t like that before,” she mutters with a scoff.

Winston gives her a sidelong glance. “Wanna finish your story?”

“Yeah, yeah. While you were gone, we had a conversation. Simon started talking about being a super. And I kind of… choked.”

Her brother stares at her, piercing.

“Choked,” he says. It’s a clear request—no, demand—for elaboration.

“Choked,” she confirms with a shrug and wince. “I got awkward about it. I didn’t mean to, Win. I just… well, you know how I feel about supers. And Simon noticed. Hell, I didn’t even think he was that perceptive of a guy. But yeah, he noticed. Started asking questions. Started asking me why I’d gotten all quiet, all of a sudden. I told him I was just drunk. He didn’t believe me. Guess that’s the lawyer in him, jumping out. It turned into a one-sided interrogation. Words were exchanged.”

“Words,” Winston repeats. Another repetition. Another wince from Evelyn.

“Words,” she confirms.

Then: “I told him the truth. I guess I didn’t see any point in being cordial any more. And then he told me… well, that he already knew. That you’d already talked about it with him. About how I feel.”

Winston says zilch. She cannot translate her brother’s expression. Usually she can read him like a children’s picture book. Now, nothing.

“And even more words were exchanged.” She continues with the story, feeling like a train crash in slow motion, cars piling atop one another, nothing anybody can do to stop it or slow it down. She waves her hands noncommittally (far more noncommittal than she feels); her silver bangle bracelets clink together. “Blah, blah, blah. In the end, we both told each other exactly what we thought of each other, and then we sat in awkward and painful silence for five minutes before you showed up to rescue us with your endless charm and geniality.”

Her attempt at joking falls on unwilling ears. Her brother looks unimpressed.

“Are you mad at me?” she finally asks. The words sound pathetic, squeaking and scared, to her ears. As if there’s nothing more frightening in the world: her brother, who is never angry with anyone, finding cause to be mad at her.

She does not say these words: _I’d get along with him if I could. And if you want to marry him, I’ll grit my teeth and put up with Simon Paladino for the rest of my life, because I love you. I wouldn’t do it for anyone else. But I love you. I’ll bear his presence, and try not to spark arguments with him over Christmas dinner, and be cordial no matter how goddamn awkward the man acts. Because you love him. And I love you._

She wishes she could push away her pride and say all that, but she knows the instant it leaves her lips, it’d sound like rubbish. Plus, she probably doesn’t really mean it anyway. There’s no getting along with Simon. The man’s unbearable. Even if he wasn’t a super, she probably wouldn’t be able to stand him.

She waits, scared, for Winston’s answer. But Winston’s answer is not particularly scary.

“I’m…” He sighs, rubs his forehead with a hand. “No, I’m not mad at you, Evelyn. You didn’t really do anything wrong. It sounds like you tried. Hell, I’ve _seen_ you trying, with him. Some people just aren’t… cut of the same cloth, y’know?”

The weight off her shoulders is immense. Like Atlas and the Earth.

She should’ve known he would understand. Winston always does. And if he doesn’t at first, he damn well makes an effort.

Evelyn can’t suppress a relieved chuckle. “Good. I was scared for a hot second there.”

“I’m glad you were honest with me. Thank you for that. And I’m not gonna ask you to change your beliefs for him. That wouldn’t be fair, not to either of you.”

“Good,” she says bluntly (she’s again brave enough to be blunt), “because I wasn’t going to, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t expect it,” Winston replies with a half-smile.

“Then what _do_ you expect?”

“I don’t know.” He turns away from her again, rests his elbows on the railing and leans down over the ant-bustling street. “It’s a tough situation. I wish you guys would get along, of course, but if you can’t… I guess we’ll just have to co-exist.”

She playfully jostles her brother’s arm. “We’re both non-negotiable, huh? That’s one thing we have in common.”

“Yeah. You’re both non-negotiable.”

“So. Simon’s… _it_.” It’s a question, a probe. One to which Evelyn probably knows the answer already.

“He’s it,” Winston agrees. He doesn’t look at her, his face lit to a warm glow by the yellow streetlights and car lights below, but he’s smiling still, thinking about faraway things and one particular faraway man. “I love him, Eve. I wanna be optimistic and say I’ve found the one. I’ve never been so certain about anybody.”

 _Except me_ , Evelyn doesn’t say, because that would be a whiny, childish, jealous thing to say, and Evelyn Deavor is not whiny, childish and jealous. At least, not outwardly. Not _usually_.    

Inside, she’s imagining decades dealing with Simon Paladino. Decades spent, seeing Gazerbeam on the news, hamming it up during interviews as superheroes do, being practically worshipped as a god, and having to think: _Well, there goes my brother-in-law._

It’s almost vomit-inducing. She does not vomit. She especially does not _show_ that she wants to vomit. Because she loves Winston, and she’s tired, anyway.

“Well,” she sighs, leaning dramatically into her brother’s side. “If you’re so damn sure about him, I guess I’ll have to put up with the bastard. For now. At least until I invent a robotic husband to replace him. You’ll be _much_ happier, then. Trust me, Win.”

He laughs loudly. “I bet.”

 _Never bet against me_ , she doesn’t say.

 _I’m only half-joking_ , she doesn’t say.

“A super for an in-law,” she does say, leaning her elbow against the railing and tapping her chin with her index finger. “That’s gonna make for some weird family dinners.”

“Heh. You’re right. At least Mom and Dad will be thrilled to pieces, though.”

 _Yeah_ , Evelyn thinks gloomily, keeping an outward lazy smile plastered on her face, for appearances. _I bet they’ll just die of happiness_.


	14. 05. "once in a red moon"

Once in a blue moon—or more accurately a red one, because blue moons happen way more often—their father’s human.

Most of the time he’s a god to them. Strong, infallible, can’t do anything wrong. A mighty man, a man who can take an entire room of businessmen or board members (gently) by the balls and make them do whatever he wants like puppets on a string. Gently, gently; he’s always gentle. But underneath the tenderness there’s steel. Mr. Deavor is a kind guy, but he’s no fool. He knows everything, Winston would say; he doesn’t know everything but he does know a hell of a lot, Evelyn would say. He never makes mistakes. Never stumbles, never falls, never even wavers the tiniest of shreds. He’s always sure and certain of every path he takes—and of every path he chooses for his family, too. Winston and Evelyn have choices, sure—but when their father counsels them, they feel less like autonomous humans and more like those puppets their father controls in his boardroom. His word isn’t law, but you get the unshakable feeling that it’s _right_. That he’s right about everything he says and to ignore his advice would be unwise as hell.

So their father is a god. Mighty, handsome, larger than life, tall and strong, a gentle dispenser of wisdom, and usually right about everything. But as said before. Once in the bluest of blue moons, he’s human again. Reduced.

Evelyn is fifteen. She’s tousle-haired; her brother affectionally calls her brown mop of locks “Eve’s mullet,” for which she punches him in the arm routinely. But yeah, she’s gotta admit, it’s a mullet. She wears round wire-frame glasses too, and she’s got quite a bit of acne. She’s basically the stereotype of a high school nerd, made flesh. She’s still a kid, but she feels caught between every identity possible for her. Engineer, scientist, chemist, inventor, lawyer, teacher. Every road opened up before her, limitless paths sprawling into eternity. She’s swamped with books and schoolwork and social awkwardness and potential boyfriends and potential girlfriends (she hasn’t figured out yet that she’s gay. She’s still learning, you see). She’s in that crux of youth, that place where you’re unformed and odd and still a child.

The part of her that deals with her perception of her dad? That, too, is confusedly caught between two points. Part of her, the childish part, still wants to believe he’s a god. Another part, the part that’s cynical and grown-up, has started identifying and documenting his mistakes.

Today, April 15th, is one of those blue moons.

 

“I’m gay.”

Winston announces this at the dinner table, in a rush, out of nowhere. Before, there was comfortable silence accented with the clinking of forks against plates and the chewing of teeth; now, the silence is deafening and _incredibly_ awkward. Evelyn looks first from her mother, to her father, then to her brother, then again in quick succession. She has no idea what to say, or even what to think. Is this brave? Is this insanity? Yeah. Maybe it’s both.

She knew Winston was gay, of course. She was the first one he told, years ago. She knew long before that, too. But she also knew that her brother had no intention of telling their parents.

(“Mom and Dad are… uh, kinda traditional,” he’d confided in her with a nervous grin-grimace.

“So you’re scared of them,” she’d confirmed dryly. She wished, very fervently, that she didn’t live in a world where kids needed to fear their parents, just because of who they are. But that world didn’t exist and Evelyn was trapped in this one, so whatever.

“No,” he quickly corrected her, swiping his hands in front of him like he was trying to push the very idea away. “I just…don’t wanna rock the boat. I want to know how they’ll react before I jump into those waters. Y’know?”

“I know,” Evelyn said, laying aside all jokes for a moment to reach over and stroke her brother’s arm with a hand. He covered that hand with his own, smiling half-heartedly but warmly at his sister.

She wasn’t prepared to say _she_ was gay—not yet, though she already knew at thirteen that she sure as hell wasn’t straight. But Winston, she’d suspected for years. And she only wanted him to be happy, and if this made him happy, then their parents damn well better go along with it.

They were pretty liberal folks, but she’d never heard them voice their opinions on homosexuality. She hoped. She really did.)

Today, at age fifteen, Evelyn hopes some more.

The awkward silence continues.

Winston, who is steadily turning fuchsia, lets out a nervous laugh that's more like a series of coughs. “Um,” he says, as though he's preparing to tell a joke. He thinks better of it and shuts up, his gaze flashing between his two parents.

He doesn't look at Evelyn, and Evelyn likes to think this is because he's  _sure_ of her.

Their parents are blinking, owlishly, both of them. Like deer in headlights, to quote the cliché. Evelyn feels a painful tightness in her stomach, and starts praying to a god she doesn't really believe in. Desperate, childish.

_Please. Just don’t let them hurt him._

“Um.” Mr. Deavor—their indomitable, by now silver-haired father—clears his throat, seems to collect his thoughts. “Why do you bring that up right now, son? Is there… something you need to discuss with us?”

“Um.” Winston laughs again, anxiously. “Yes. The fact that I’m gay, I suppose?”

This is going great so far. Evelyn spears a green bean with her fork, brings it to her lips, and half-heartedly begins chewing.

“You know we’ll love you no matter what, Win.” This from their mother, who reaches over from her spot beside Winston to pat him—awkwardly, but still, physical contact, a definite plus—on the shoulder.

“Of course, but—”

“There is no but.” Their mother speaks over their father, which is something that never, ever happens, so shocking that Evelyn stops chewing her green bean to stare. “There’s no but,” she repeats. “We love him.”

“Of course,” their father replies, patient as always. “But.”

This time, their mother doesn't contest the _but_ , although her eyes narrow.

 _Good,_ thinks Evelyn, _good. She’s on our side_.

When their dad realizes he’ll be allowed to continue, he sighs heavily, swallows, and turns to Winston with an even gaze.

“Why now?” he says.

Evelyn can sense—so faintly that she thinks she might be imagining it, though she's a pretty perceptive girl and she doesn't usually imagine things about people—that her father is keeping some strong emotions just barely in check. There is something under the surface here. Not good. Bad. She suppresses a wince.

“I don’t know,” Winston admits. He’s blushing furiously, and he looks like he's regretting his choice, badly. He can barely meet his father’s eyes. “I just—I was thinking about it, all day today, all _year_ actually, and I didn’t want another day to go by where you didn’t know. This secret about me, I’ve been hiding it, I’ve been keeping it all tamped down, and I just can’t anymore. I want to be _me_.”

At just eighteen years old, her brother has the bravery of ten United States Marines, thinks Evelyn with a measured amount of fierce pride.

There is silence. Just for a moment.

Then, their father puts down his fork.

 _Oh shit_ , thinks Evelyn in dismay, _he’s put down his fork_.

“Son,” he says. “Do you remember just a few days ago? We had that discussion about your future at DevTech? Inheriting the company? Passing it down to your kids, and their kids, and so on?”

Oh, so _that's_ the problem. Evelyn abruptly feels quite a bit sicker.

Winston doesn't seem to catch on. “I—yes, but…”

“And just today, just a few days later, you feel the need to out yourself, as it were?” Their father doesn't sound angry, but Evelyn finally thinks she can pinpoint the emotions that he's keeping concealed—deep, deep disappointment. “Do you think those two things could possibly be related?”

“I—”

Winston catches on.

The flush of his face turns from an embarrassed red to an indignant, even angry, color. “You… you think I’m making this up? Because I want to get out of inheriting the company?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” protests their father evenly, raising his hands as though in surrender. “But I have to wonder.”

“Wonder _what_ , Dad?” Winston demands, hurt bleeding through his words. He looks wounded. Evelyn wants to jump over the table and hug him. Somehow, she manages to not do this.

“Whether you’re using this as an excuse,” says Dad. Mildly, but with an undeniable edge to his words. “You’re a homosexual. All right. So you will never marry or have children, and you’ll have no one to pass DevTech down to. So maybe I’ll reconsider having you as my heir. I’m just thinking out loud, Winston, because to be honest, that is the first thing that jumped into my mind. It seems awfully convenient. Doesn’t it?”

The silence that follows is electrically charged.

Winston slowly gets up from the table. The legs of his chair scrape against the wooden floor.

He doesn't say anything. He leaves. The room feels tomblike without him in it.

“Dad,” says Evelyn, long after the dining room door swung closed behind her brother.

“Yes, Eve?” Her father turns a measured eye on her. He doesn't look affected, doesn't look bothered. Her fury multiplies.

“ _Dad_ ,” she repeats. “I cannot fucking believe you.”

“Language at the table—” her mother protests. Evelyn resoundingly ignores her.

“He was being so vulnerable, and you brush him off like that?” She attempts to keep herself even, controlled, cold and untouchable, but her anger and her pain on her brother’s behalf—because this is almost exactly what she hoped _wouldn’t_ happen—threatens to ruin it. “You accuse him of—what the hell exactly _are_ you accusing him of? Lying to get out of inheriting the company? You know he’d never do that, Dad. You _know_ him. At least I thought you knew him.”

“Evelyn.” Her father only says her name. He says it tiredly. For the first time she notices, truly notices, the wrinkles slowly making their way across his face like rivers carving out their place in a landscape, the pure white of his hair, the lines deeply underscoring his tired eyes. Her father’s old. Her father’s not a god. Her father can make mistakes.

She wants to scoff and sit back in her chair with a proud shake of her head. She doesn’t. She sits rigid, staring.

Her dad seems to melt. He slumps in his chair, ever so slightly.

Before he can speak, Mom speaks. “I wish things hadn’t gone that way,” she says softly, and Evelyn can see the beginnings of tears prickling in the older woman’s eyes.

“I do too.” Dad isn’t crying, but he’s not as solid as before either. There is a sudden lack of shape to him, a lack of resolve. He has begun to regret.

Good. He damn well better.

“I shouldn’t have thrown an accusation at him. That was—a poor way to handle things,” Dad sighs, lowering his head as though in shame. “I should’ve—ah, I don’t know.”

“Acceptance,” Evelyn says levelly, refusing to do anything other than stare her dad square in the eye. “That’s all Winston deserves. Total acceptance. Right? So the next time you see him, you’re gonna apologize.”

“I just want,” says Dad—somehow, thinks Evelyn with annoyance, as though he hadn’t heard her at all—“for someone to carry on the Deavor name and keep DevTech going. That’s all. That’s all I’ve been thinking about for—god, the past twenty years.” He looks exhausted. Evelyn is half-prepared to leap over and catch him when he falls into a faint. “And if Winston’s—well. If Winston prefers men. Then he’s probably never going to have children, and…”

“You don’t know that,” says Evelyn with more contempt and annoyance than she meant to express.

“Excuse me,” murmurs Mom, “I don’t want to hear this argument.” She gets up and swishes away in a swirl of flowy skirts. Evelyn hears her footsteps retreating up the nearby stairs. Evelyn keeps looking Dad square in the face.

“You know, I used to think you were a pretty awesome guy,” she says.

Dad says nothing.

“Like, perfect. Awe-inspiring. Can’t do a damn thing wrong. But here you are, fucking up before my very eyes.”

“There’s no need to curse at me,” says Dad, with a small shake of his head, but there’s no real fire behind his words.

“You’re right,” she says, with all the scorn she can muster as a self-respecting hormonal fifteen-year-old with glasses and a mullet and no clear view of her own future. “I don’t need to curse at you, ’cause you don’t deserve it.”

“Anyone can make a mistake, Evelyn.” The gentleness in his voice makes her even angrier. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t care why.

“Yeah,” she mutters, unable to come up with an argument against that. “But you hurt him, and that’s what counts. You weren’t thinking about him. You were thinking about yourself. Who gives a shit if he never has any kids or if he has a thousand of the little f—” She restrains herself from swearing with pursed lips. “You messed up,” she concludes, “and I’m mad at you. That’s all. Bye, Dad.”

( _You messed up, and I’m mad at you_. Maybe she’s not mad, she muses, because he hurt her brother. Maybe she’s mad because her father—who she can always rely on, always trust—has shown he’s not always trustworthy, not always the smartest or most empathetic guy in the room.

And because he hurt her brother. That too. Definitely.)

Dad doesn’t ask if she means forever. She hopes he knows she doesn’t. This anger will fade. She loves her dad. In time she’ll wish she hadn’t said any of this. But right now, she leaves the argument unfinished. Finding her brother is more important, Consoling him, letting him know he has a future that matters more than DevTech ever will, is more important. In a few days Winston and their dad will make up, and their dad will say sappy things about how his son’s sexual orientation doesn’t matter as long as Winston’s healthy and happy, and Winston will probably shed a few tears and there’ll be hugs all around. But for now everyone is angry and nothing is okay and things that are broken need to be fixed.

She gets up from the table, and she goes to the door, away from her imperfect dad, and she runs outside into the cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank for for reading! I decided to do this challenge: http://inkstay.tumblr.com/post/143937584209/dare-to-write-challenge , and I thought the Deavor siblings/family were a perfect focus for it. I plan to update this at least a few times. I really love both of the siblings and their dynamic, and future chapters might include other siblings (like Nelson or Carson/Cosmosis) and other Incredibles characters too, though I'm not quite sure where the muse will take me yet. Again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.


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